Wings of Change – Change Your Life Articles

Have you ever felt like you don’t belong, you don’t fit in? Does your life constantly bang against the wall of conformity and crash against the common perception of life? This is what the authors of Wings of Change, Jim and Katharina Murdoch, were facing when their lives were turned upside down by unexpected events. How could life be any worse? Religion wasn’t meeting their needs, jobs weren’t meeting their needs, and to top it all along came a force which threatened to tear their family apart.

But they survived, not what could be said about their belief systems. “Our beliefs took a knock, a big knock,” says Jim. “One day we thought all our beliefs about God, life and the world were in order, then they were all turned on their head. Nothing has been the same since.” This was the turning point in their lives as they began to pursue the answers which had been avoiding them until now. And thus began a journey of discovery.

Their discoveries, uncovered independently as they each walked distinct paths, were complimentary and served to bind them together against all odds in spite of the forces threatening to pull them apart. Amazingly, their separate paths were uncovering the same truths and they found themselves agreeing more and more as they learned about God, the universe and consciousness.

The lessons they learned on their journey serve as an inspiration to the reader. You will read how they grew in awareness of who and what they are, how they learned to let go of old ways and paradigms and how to listen to their inner voice for guidance. The reader will benefit from their lessons of overcoming obstacles, daring to experiment with new ideas, realizing their purpose and acting on their new found truth to live the life they desire.

To help tell their story, Jim & Katharina have been inspired to adapt a parable to highlight each chapter. Using a family of geese they intriguingly blend in their life’s experiences into the geese’s life and their pursuit of happiness in learning the V formation and daring to fly south.

Katharina sums it up, “The readers will have fun. It’s inspiring and they will learn something for life. There is hope for anyone. No matter how bad a situation may be there is wonderful hope.”

Wings of Change – Discover a New Formation to Success will inspire you to take a new look at life and dare to be different.

Everyone wants freedom. You want freedom, I want freedom. But very few of us actually have freedom and very few of us can actually define freedom. What I am talking about here is personal freedom, your ability to make the choices you want and which benefit you. The problem is you don’t have personal freedom and there are four good reasons why you don’t.

In fact it all boils down to only one big reason. Here are the four reasons why you don’t have personal freedom:

1. You do not choose how healthy you are. You are allowing the doctors, the nutrition experts, the common fads to make your choices for you. How often do you choose what foods to eat, what supplements to take, what exercises to do. It’s difficult isn’t it? There are so many opinions and differing diets and fitness theories that in the end most people resort back to another form of allowing others to choose, doing what everyone else does. But what are your choices? What do you want?
2. Do you go to religious meetings? Why? Because you woke up one day and decided to go? Not likely. You go because you have been given a set of beliefs which you accept. Did you ever think where those came from? Have you ever thought why you do certain things in certain ways? Like get education, get a job and have a pension plan. Have you ever thought if thee was another way, another path, and path which would actually be beneficial and lead you to your dreams? Perhaps there is. He who seeks will find!
3. What have you done this week which was your choice and your time? Not much, eh! Apart from working for an employer to earn your money, how much time have you spent doing stuff for others? Have you taken time for yourself lately? I am not saying you should neglect others and especially loved ones, but it is important to get a balance and to reserve time for you and your desires.
4. And what about that money you work so hard to get? Are you in control of that? Are you making your own choices when it comes to spending that money, or are you subject to the advertisements and fancy store displays and what your friends say you must have? Or how much food do you throw away simply because you run for the sales and specials and end up with much too much? Do you choose how to spend your money on the things you want? I don’t recommend spending less as much as spending wisely.

So are you free? Who is making your choices? Why are you doing the things you do? Why do you believe the things you believe? Why do you buy the things you buy? Why do you eat and exercise the way you do? We all have a built in sensory system to help us make better choices. It is called intuition. Learn to listen to the gut feeling and you will begin to make better choices and move into your own personal freedom.

There are three things you need to know in order to be successful. Without these three things you will never know what success is. The three things you need to know are:

1. What you want
2. What’s stopping you from getting what you want
3. And how to get what you want.

If you know these three things you will be well on your way to fulfilling your dreams. Allow me to take a few minutes to explain each of these. You will finish reading armed with knowledge and inspired by new ideas which you know will be your own expression of life.

1. The first thing you need to know is what you want. That might sound simple enough but how many really know what they want? What is your goal in life? To work hard and retire at 65 and then enjoy life? Maybe you never thought of it that way, but that is exactly how many live their lives. They think that by working hard and paying into a pension fund and maybe retiring a few years early is living a life. I say, get a life! And I mean that literally. Get your own life! Decide what you want to have, do or be. Many people know what they would like, but never believe they could actually have it. They lack the faith in life itself to deliver their dream.

I want to let you know that “If you can dream it, you can do it.” Walt Disney said that and he is right. You can have whatever you want, you can do whatever you want, and you can be whatever you want.

• The first step towards achieving that is to write it down. Get a piece of paper and write it down. Write as if it already is now, give it colour, give it sound, give it lots of detail. What is it like to have what you want now, how does it feel, what does it look like, what people do you have around you? Get as much detail into your description as you can imagine.
• Once you have your written dream now spend time living it. Experience the feelings in having your dream. Get in the vibration of having it now – and hold onto that feeling and hold onto your vision. Doing this will begin to attract it to you. Believe me. Things will begin to happen and ideas will begin to flow. Pay attention to these, these are the answers to your unspoken question: “How am I going to get there?”

2. The next thing you need to know to be successful and achieve your dreams is what is stopping you. What is holding you back? Why haven’t you got there already? Even if you have a written description what is it which is blocking you from moving forward and achieving that which you desire? I am going to suggest two things which are most likely responsible for stopping you getting what you want:

• The first is Mind Sets – Paradigms. Mind sets such as “I am going to work hard and retire at 65 and live a good life.” I say this with a robot voice because this is nothing other than a programmed thought in your sub-conscious mind. You have many such mind sets, like “I can never do that”, “I can never be successful”, “I can never achieve greatness”, “Such things are only for the elite and privileged and multi-talented.” Dear friend, may I divulge a secret? You are multi-talented and you are among the privileged and you can achieve whatever you dream of.
• The second thing stopping you from achieving your dreams is FEAR. Fear is actually another mind set, but I mention it because this is perhaps the single most restricting mind-set of all. Fear stops more people from being successful than any other thing. This can be fear of people, fear of failure – that’s a big one, fear of change. So much fear stops people even wanting to be successful so they never dare to even dream. One should be content they say. Not everyone can be successful they say. But deep down it is fear which holds them back.

If you have identified fear as that which is stopping you from doing what you want then pay attention to the third thing you should know to be successful.

3. The third thing to know to be successful is how to get what you want. OK, you have described your goal, and you identified the blockages. What now? How do you move forward to get what you want?

• The first step you already know – Visualize it. This is very important in order to get into the feeling of success, and visualization should be ongoing and never stop.
• After this, you need to determine the first three things you need to do to get you closer to your goal. Write down these three activities and decide when you are going to do them, and then put them into your calendar. The next step is of course to take action and carry out those three activities. Then when those three are completed write down the next three actions which will take you closer yet to your goal.

This third point may also seem very simple and commonsensical, but it’s exactly here where many people fail. They fail to take action. Dreams come and go but only those taking action actually fulfill their dreams.

This is where coaches come in. A coach can help you in all three of these areas, helping you identify and describe your deepest desire and life goals, uncover and eliminate those mind sets and fears which are holding you back, and motivate and monitor you as you determine your action steps and put them into practice.

You know what it is that you want. You may know what is holding you back, and you may even know what to do to get there, but you lack the motivation and knowledge to move into the realm of the successful achievers. Get a coach to guide you towards your dreams and celebrate your successes with you.

Achieving the wealth you desire can be surprisingly easy; you just need to have a solid plan and follow through. Problems arise because people tend to be unorganized, unmotivated, or simply lack the intense desire to do whatever it takes to achieve supreme wealth.

If you work on developing a good plan and you have the enthusiasm to succeed, you’ll soon find that nothing can hold you back from the wealth you deserve.

Follow through with these action steps to get to your destination:

1. Figure out what you want. It doesn’t matter how organized or motivated you are, if you don’t know what you want you’ll never achieve supreme wealth. Just wanting to be wealthy is not enough; you need to have a solid plan in place.
   • Playing the lotto or other shot in the pan strategies will rarely get you where you want to go. Instead, focus on a true means of making money.
   • If you have money to start out with, research investments that can put your money to work for you.
   • If you’re starting from scratch, look into starting your own business. Don’t be scared if you lack business skills at first. There’s always room for people to work from the ground up.
   • Remember that such a grand journey will take time. Few people can achieve wealth overnight.
   • Another question to ponder is: How much money do you want to be making? This will depend on your definition of supreme wealth. Do you want a 6-figure passive income stream or are you looking to make the richest people in the world list? In either situation, you have to start with smaller goals. As you reach each goal you’ll find that it’s easier and easier to scale up.
2. Get organized. Once you’ve figured out how you’re going to become wealthy, it’s time to organize yourself. In order to get there in the shortest time possible, you have to strategize.
   • If you’re working with others, make a list of how many people are involved and their various job functions.
   • No matter how many steps it’s going to take you to reach your end goal, write down each individual step. Give yourself a timeline for your goals and cross off each task as you complete it.
3. Take action. This is where many people find themselves stuck. You’re now beyond the idea and planning phase, and it’s time to get to work. If you have your days properly planned out, then you’ll know exactly what you should be doing.
   • Fight the urge to procrastinate.
   • Establish a day-to-day routine that takes you forward. Once you’re used to the work that you’re doing, it won’t be as hard to continue doing it.
   • Remember that the beginning is most often the hardest part. If you can survive the initial plunge towards success, you can prove to yourself that you can get all the way there.
4. Maintain motivation. Having the motivation to continue is huge. Most people who make it to the action phase start taking action, but stop when they don’t experience immediate results. Do everything in your power to maintain your drive to succeed.

When you have a grand goal, it can be tempting to give up and claim that you’re goal was impossible in the first place. However, there are plenty of people in the world who are living proof that you are rewarded when you work hard and smart.

Use these strategies to help you work hard and smart and the journey to supreme wealth won’t be as long as you thought.

Learning to let go and forgive is a noble act. It can help you have peace with yourself and others. However great the benefits, though, it’s not always an easy thing to achieve.

Small transgressions are easy to forgive and forget. But then there are the big things for which you may feel the need to cling onto. You might tell yourself that you’ve let it go, but ultimately you haven’t. In these tough situations, there are techniques that you can use to finally let go and find peace.

Learning to Forgive

It’s important to learn to forgive. Holding onto grudges or resentments only hurts you. It can lead to bad moods, depression, or even health conditions. When you hold onto resentment, you allow a situation to burden your future.

Forgiveness is the right choice to make, but it doesn’t mean that you’ve forgotten what has happened. You might even still hold someone else accountable for the wrong. With forgiveness, you’re simply making the decision to move on with your life.

It means that, while you might not ever completely forget the pain, you’ll still be able to live your daily life without it. And when you see the person who has wronged you, you won’t immediately think of or bring up the situation.

How to Forgive

There’s no set rule on how you should approach forgiveness. However, you may know deep down when it’s time to forgive. When you realize that you’ve been replaying a situation in your head over and over, it’s time to let it go and forgive.

In order to forgive, you also need to allow a change to take place in your life. Find the compassion within to make peace with the past. You’ll feel the change in your heart as you let the resentment go and make room for positive feelings.

This can be especially difficult if the person you’re dealing with seems resistant to change or doesn’t even care about your forgiveness. In this situation, remember that you’re searching for peace for yourself. It isn’t about making the other person feel better; it’s about making you feel better.

Letting Go

Once you’ve found it in your heart to forgive, it’s time to work on letting go. This step can be so difficult, yet it’s the most important. Letting go simply means that you’re not fighting battles in your mind anymore.

One way to let go is to adopt the attitude of a present moment thinker or forward thinker. You’ll want to spend as much time as you can to truly experience life in the moment.

It’s when the past and negative thinking creep up that problems are likely to occur. When this happens, do whatever is in your power to ease your mind. You’ll find that as time goes by, things do get easier to deal with when it comes to situations involving forgiveness.

Remember that letting go is the best thing you can do for yourself. You certainly don’t enjoy holding onto anger and resentment, so why continue? Ask yourself if those feelings are really serving a purpose for you. Then make the choice to forgive and forget. You’ll be glad you did!

Do you struggle to keep your New Year’s resolutions? More than likely, the excitement of starting a New Year wanes away and you find yourself back into your old routines.

With proper motivation and the will to change, you can be the exception to this trend. The trick is to turn your optimism for the New Year into concrete actions. Once you start a routine, it becomes easier to follow through.

Whether you’re making multiple resolutions or wanting to work towards one bigger goal, be sure to pick something that’s achievable within the year’s time frame.

Set Achievable and Clear Goals

Strive for making your goals achievable so you don’t set yourself up for future failure. For example, let’s say your goal is to lose weight. Determine where you stand currently, and then give yourself a goal that can be achieved following the 1-2 pounds per week guideline.

You’ll also benefit from making clear goals. Rather than saying that you want to be thinner, say how many pounds you’d like to lose. Then define the “how” as well. Are you going to follow a specific diet? How are you going to cut calories? Are you going to start a moderate exercise routine? How often?

With a clear, achievable goal and a set plan of tasks you know you can complete, you virtually guarantee your success! You know exactly what you want and how you’re going to get there. All you need to do now is take action.

Take Action

Taking action is usually where people tend to run into some trouble. It’s easy to get pumped up about an idea, but when it comes down to executing your plan, you might be tempted to fall short.

In this situation, you only need to muster up the energy to start. Tell yourself that you’re going to stick to your new plan for one week and then evaluate how it went. On the other hand, if you take everything in all at once, you’ll be less likely to begin in the first place. If it looks overwhelming, just focus on the short term.

Form a Routine

The reason you want to take baby steps at first is because once you form a new routine, it’s actually easy to hold yourself to it. Some say that it takes as little as two weeks to get a new routine engrained in your brain.

For example, in the weight loss scenario, starting an exercise routine can be especially grueling if you’re out of shape. The first two days can leave you tired, sore, and weak. That doesn’t sound like fun at all! However, those first two days are the worst you’ll endure. After your routine is built, you may find that you look forward to your exercise sessions.

Reward Yourself

Reward yourself often for your excellent efforts because you deserve it for working hard to change yourself for the better. You don’t need to wait until the end of the year to treat yourself.

Break up your goals into smaller pieces and every time you achieve a milestone, give yourself something that you enjoy. It could be an item you’ve been wanting or maybe a night out on the town.

Rewarding yourself for a job well done motivates you to keep going!

Do It Again!

After your first successful year of bettering yourself through New Year’s resolutions, you can then repeat the process and work on another aspect of your life. Before you know it, you’ll be a perfectly happy and healthy person because of your awareness, perseverance, and hard work!

Once you begin your journey into meditation, you’ll soon discover the power that it has to reveal truth and peace in your life. In a fast paced world where everything keeps getting faster and more complicated, it’s important to deepen your practice with meditation.

With regular practice you’ll find that you’ll be able to go deeper into meditation without much effort. As you practice, you’ll be better able to deal with distractions and achieve a certain depth of meditation in a shorter period of time. If you practice for just 30 minutes per day, you’ll be able to go deeper each time.

Deepening Your Practice

You may be wondering what it means to deepen your practice. It’s definitely a topic that’s difficult to put into mere words. It’s similar to talking about how to deepen your love. If you’ve been in love you’ll know in your heart what it feels like to experience the depth of love. The same is true when you meditate, you’ll know what it feels like as your practice deepens.

Tactics For Deepening Your Practice

If you want to go beyond regular practice to deepen your meditation skills, you can try these other tactics.

Consider these suggestions as you deepen your practice:

1. Focus. A big part of deepening your practice is working on an improved focus. Find something that works for you.
   • First try experiencing eyes open meditation. Meditate with a small focal point and don’t let your gaze go astray during your session. You can also try eyes open meditation without the need for a strict focal point; this may help you to keep your focus within.
   • Alternatively, you can explore the option of eyes closed meditation. Many people enjoy the aspect of shutting out the visual sense, while others think it’s too much of an escape from true life, so do what feels right.
2. Your breath. Your breath is also a part of your focus. It’s how you break up your life into a series of moments. Take a moment to breathe in the good and a moment to exhale the bad. In order to deepen your practice, experiment with different breathing techniques.
   • Work on the length of your breaths. Some people decide to work with their moods when they work on breath length. It’s a way to just go with how you feel, instead of deciding on a set pattern of breathing.
   • Use a mantra. There are many mantras to choose from or you can even create your own depending on how you feel or what you like.
3. Your posture. Your posture also has an impact on how deep your practice will go. Choose a position that’s comfortable for you.
   • During sitting meditation, it’s always a good idea to maintain good posture. This means: Don’t slouch! The location of your legs usually doesn’t matter as much.
   • If you maintain a good posture without hunching over, you tend to maintain your alertness and you’ll be less likely to fall asleep. Remember that your goal is to remain in the present moment and not merely to relax.

Keep Up Your Practice

The most important thing you need to do is keep up with your practice. You can then tweak any other aspect of meditation that you feel needs adjusting. However, you may find that you simply evolve without much effort as you continue your meditative journey.

Dealing with conflict is hardly ever easy, but there are healthy and productive ways of getting through it. Conflict resolution goes to the heart of your communication skills. This means that it’s something that might come naturally to some people, while others will struggle.

The good news is that you can strengthen your skills in this area. With some effort on your part, you can make your life easier as well as communicate on a deeper level with those around you.

Here are a few strategies you can use to better deal with conflict:

1. Recognize differing opinions. Conflict generally arises when people fail to recognize or understand a differing opinion in another person.
   • If you’re mediating a conflict between two people, tell them to put themselves in the other person’s shoes.
   • If you’re in the middle of a conflict, take the time to truly listen to what the other person is saying and try to see where they’re coming from in the situation.
2. Work on communication. How many times have you found yourself dealing with conflict because of a miscommunication issue? Communicating effectively in the first place prevents many conflicts from ever developing.
   • Remember that communication is a two way street, so practice both your verbal and listening skills.
3. Allow everyone to speak. It’s vital that everyone involved in the conflict has a chance to speak. There will be no true resolution if everyone’s needs are not heard and met. It would turn out to be a band-aid solution and only a matter of time before the conflict reared its ugly head once again.
4. Stay calm. This is one of the most important keys to expressing yourself in a healthy fashion. When conflicts arise, things can get quickly heated if you don’t make a conscious effort to stay calm. Emotions start flying and you may say something you later regret.
   • If telling yourself to stay calm isn’t effective, take a break and let emotions cool down before you return to any conflict resolution.
5. Talk about mistakes. Everyone knows that people make mistakes because it’s human nature. However, it also seems to be human nature to fight acceptance of those mistakes. Conflicts often arise from mistakes, so it’s best to be upfront about them.
   • Identify the mistake that led to the conflict.
   • What was the intention behind the mistake? In many cases, the person causing the mistake didn’t intend for it to happen.
   • Work on forgiveness and setting things right again.
6. Discuss resolution. Every conflict needs a solution. The best resolutions involve a win-win scenario for everyone. However, remember that everyone may not be completely happy with the solution. In this case, ensure that everyone at least accepts the compromise and is at peace with it.
7. Learn from it. Resolving conflicts can result in some valuable life lessons. Discuss what each of you has learned from this conflict, and then leave it behind to move forward to better things.

Once a conflict has been resolved in a healthy manner, it’s good to identify the steps you took in order to achieve a resolution. Your successful process may help you in the future when you need to manage conflict again.

You can help the world by being kind to yourself. Some believe that you must be completely selfless and put other people and things above yourself in order to spend your time in a worthwhile way. But this isn’t always the case.

When you’re kind to yourself, you can actually spread that kindness to others in a viral way.

Work Out Your Own Issues First

If you constantly ignore your own wants and needs, you’ll eventually become stressed out and frustrated. You simply can’t go about life ignoring what you truly want. You can tell yourself that you’re doing it for the good of the world, but in the end it’ll be quite the opposite.

If you’re stressed out, others will notice, even if you think you’ve bottled it up inside. There are subtle hints that you give away. Your muscles may be tense, or you might even have a nervous tick. You also could be distracted and noticeably distraught during times where you would have normally participated socially.

You may think that it’s no big deal, but it really can be. People can pick up on a negative or nervous mentality, and become stressed out themselves!

Have you ever been around someone who’s clearly enjoying life with a big smile and relaxed nature? Their attitude is infectious, isn’t it? You’ll probably end up enjoying your day a whole lot more just because you encountered this person.

Remember that the opposite is also true. If you act negatively, you may end up sending someone home in a bad mood even though you never intended it.

Spreading The Spirit

Once you’ve worked out your personal issues, you can then pass on a positive spirit to the world. You can do this without even trying. Go about your day in a positive light, and you may find that you’re joyous mood spreads to everyone, even the lady at the checkout counter at the local store.

You can also consciously and actively spread around a good spirit. Pass out sincere compliments to both friends and strangers. Tell your friends and family what they really mean to you. They’ll appreciate hearing it.

You may also find that these actions make you feel good in the process. It’s just another way that a simple gesture can help you to spread joy to the world.

New Ideas

If you’re up to it, you can take everything to yet another level. Brainstorm new ideas and activities that you find personally enjoyable and also help others as well.

With some creative thinking, you’ll probably think of several things that fall within your personal skill set that can benefit the world.

• For example, if you enjoy carpentry or other house building skills, join your local chapter of Habitat For Humanity and spend time with them on your weekends.

• If you enjoy environmentally friendly activities, engage in them in your free time. You can also spread an awareness of these activities to your friends and colleagues.

Feeling like you’ve made a positive difference can help you feel great about yourself!

Your True Self

Your job is to find your true self. Just that act alone does a lot for helping the world. You can inspire others to find their true selves and the world will be a happier place for all you come into contact with.

Effective communication is one of the keys to success, and when you’re good at it, people notice.

Most people think that strengthening communication skills involves developing persuasive speech and conversational skills, but what you may not realize is just how important effective listening can be.

Without an effective listener, none of your conversational skills would matter. This is because your points – no matter how clear – still wouldn’t be heard or understood.

Remember that listening is a full 50% of the communication effort so it’s worth your time to develop this precious skill, too.

Here are some techniques you can use to build your listening skills:

1. Fight the urge to speak. Sometimes when you’re engaged in a heated conversation, you start to concentrate on what you’re going to say next. You may even be tempted to open your mouth before the other person is finished. Make the extra effort to keep your lips sealed until they’re through talking.
   • While they’re speaking, don’t worry about what you’re going to say or how you’re going to say it. Instead, focus on the words and body language of the other person.
     
2. Look interested. Your nonverbal communication skills are important while you’re listening. If you’re looking disinterested and uncaring, the person trying to communicate with you will likely pick up on these subtle hints. They may be flustered or less likely to share their thoughts. Makes sense, right?
   • Engage with the person talking. Make eye contact and nod your head or smile. Let your conversation partner know that their points are coming across to you.
3. Repeat the highlights. One way to literally tell your conversation partner that they’re effectively communicating is to simply restate their points. You can repeat key phrases in an affirming tone. You can even give them a quick summary of what they just said in your own words.
   • Avoid sharing your opinions when repeating their concepts or ideas. At this point, you simply want to communicate that you’ve completely understood their meaning.
4. Ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask your conversation partner to elaborate on what they’re saying. If you need further information, then ask for it. The important thing is that you understand what they’re trying to get across.
5. Be patient. It’s also important to maintain patience, especially when working with people who may be shy or may not have the ability to communicate very well. If you’re not patient, you may end the conversation prematurely or scare off your conversation partner.
6. Follow your partner’s lead. Being an effective listener doesn’t mean that your only job is to listen. You can certainly add to the conversation, too. At the same time, you don’t want to overpower the conversation. Add your input when they ask for it or when they’ve finished their point.

Remember that practice makes perfect. After you’ve had an important conversation, ask yourself what you remember from the conversation. Write down the details if necessary. Did you allow the other person to do most of the talking?

When you fight the urge to dominate conversations, you’ll be able to truly hear what people have to say!